Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 122, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 745 & 746, September/October 2003

The slaves were not back yet. While they milked their precious holiday for all it was worth, there was none of the customary clattering of pots and skillets from the kitchens. No bickering coming out of the married quarters. The heather brooms and garden shears were silent. Everything was silent.

Seated on a white marble bench with her back against an apple tree, Claudia watched her blue-eyed, cross-eyed, dark Egyptian cat chase a mouse round the shrine in the corner of the garden and slowly sipped her wine. The wine was dark. Dark as Claudia’s mood. And every bit as heavy. Cradling the green glass goblet in both hands, she stared up at the night sky without blinking. The stars would make life easy for navigation out at sea tonight, she thought. Directly overhead, the dragon roared and Hercules strode purposefully across the heavens, wielding his olive-wood club. How appropriate, she mused, that it was the constellation of Sagittarius which was starting to rise over the southern horizon. Sagittarius, the Archer...

The army had come, conducted its investigation in the twinkling of an eye, and departed hours ago. The young man’s body had been carted away unceremoniously on a stretcher and Labeo had been lauded for a job well done, both by the army and his bereaved employer. It had been left to Claudia and her bodyguard to stack the stolen objects back inside the sack, in which Junius later returned them to their owner.

Still staring at the stars, she sipped her wine.

“So then.” A tall, patrician body eased itself onto the bench, leaned its back against the rough bark of the apple tree, and crossed its long patrician legs at its booted ankles. “Cut and dried.”

Even above the scents of the junipers and cypress, the heliotrope and the lilies, she could smell his spicy sandalwood unguent. Caught a faint whiff of the rosemary in which his trademark long linen tunic had been rinsed.

“I wondered how long it would take before Marcus Cornelius Orbilio arrived on the scene,” she said without turning her head.

Up there on Olympus, Fortune must be wetting her knickers. Claudia topped up her goblet from the jar. Dammit, she couldn’t make a move without the Security Police popping up in the form of their only aristocratic investigator, who seemed to view her — let’s call them misdemeanours — as his fast track to the Senate. Still. What did she care? She had nothing to hide from him this time. For once, Marcus Make-Room-for-Me-in-the-Assembly Orbilio was whistling in the dark.

She couldn’t see him, but knew that he was grinning. “Why?” he asked. “Were you running a book on when I’d arrive?”

“Tch, tch, tch. You should know that gambling’s against the law, Orbilio.”

“Which happens to be one of the reasons I’ve called round.” A shower of bronze betting receipts scattered on the path. “Yours, I believe.”

“Never seen them before in my life,” she replied. Bugger. That was the best boxer in Rome she’d backed with those. Half a brickwork’s worth, if she recalled.

“What about these?” he said, showering a dozen more.

And that, unless she missed her guess, was the other half, invested at five to one on a Scythian wrestler from the north coast of the Black Sea. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

“We caught the bookie touting outside the imperial palace,” he said cheerfully. “You know, you really should be more careful who you have dealings with, Claudia.”

She skewered him with a glare. “Damn right.”

“How much of Gaius’s money do you have left?” he asked.

The old adage was true, she thought ruefully. The best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one...

“Jupiter alone knows what will happen to the family fortune once I’m married to you,” he continued smoothly. “We’ll probably be celebrating our fifth anniversary in the gutter.”

She supposed it was the moon making twinkles in his eyes, but in its clear, three-quarters light she could see every curl in his thick mop of hair, the solid musculature of his chest, the crisp, dark hairs on the back of his forearms.

“I would go to the lions before I went to the altar with you, Marcus Cornelius, and if you’ve finished littering my garden path, perhaps you’ll be kind enough to sod off. I have a pressing engagement.” She patted the wine jar beside her. “With my friend Bacchus here.”

“Hmm.” He folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. “You seem to be having a lot of metal littering your garden path all of a sudden. Tell me about this morning.”

“No.”

Why the hell did he think she wanted to get drunk? To forget, that was why. To forget a young man with an ecstatic grin and eyes as brown as an otter. Eyes that she had watched glaze in death...

“Oh no. There’s more to it than that,” he said, clicking his tongue. “I know you inside out.” He recrossed his ankles, but did not open his eyes. “Tell me.”

“If I did, you wouldn’t believe me.”